Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Transcendence (2014)

Funny story with this movie: I went to see it on what
Catholics call Holy Friday and on that day, actually that whole weekend, well,
theaters where flooded with church religious folks going to see either God is
not Dead (2014) or Heaven is for Real (2014). So I felt out of place going to
see Transcendence which touches upon the dangers of religious fanaticism, from
a more philosophical angle. Transcendence is a movie against religion, not for
it. Funny part is that the theater that was playing God is not Dead was right
next to the one playing Transcendence and both films were starting at the same
time. The interesting part is that I could see people entering in droves to God is not
Dead while every once in a while, somebody would go into Transcendence and my
first thought how this was all so symbolic of what goes on in the world. So
very few people are inclined towards the philosophical, the thought provoking.

I’m of the mind that religion is dying off little by little
and that thanks to the help of the internet and social media, people are slowly
realizing just how much of a fairy tale religion is. The powers that be know
this, which explains the avalanche of religious flicks we’ve being seeing
lately. It almost feels like a desperate attempt to inject society with
religiosity again. The powers that be also control Hollywood and they know how
to use it well. I mean, even Hitler realized the power of cinema to transmit
his ideas! So anyhow, this avalanche of Christian movies is to me, the lowest
type of religious propaganda, so sleazy, so obvious in its desperation. There
could be another explanation for the recent onslaught of religious flicks:
money. Religious people don’t need much to get all fired up and Hollywood knows
it. This explains why a prejudiced film like God is not Dead is making money. Hollywood
knows this is an untapped market, and it seems they now want to exploit it as much
as possible. I mean, this month alone we had 3 religious themed films! And they
all have these titles that make it obvious they have an agenda. God is not Dead….Heaven
is for Real…I'm in Love with a Church Girl….these titles let us see the kind
of ideas that they want to infuse into society. God isn’t dead no matter what
your university teachers tell ya! Heaven is Real, look at this little kid who went
to heaven...and when you marry, make sure she’s a church girl! What the?! What’s
next? A film called Science is the Antichrist?

I mean, it’s not like films about ‘not believing’ are so
obvious with their titles. Just look at a film like Transcendence; there’s
nothing to tell you that it’s a film about religious fanaticism, the themes are
not blunt or in your face. The themes are not even implied in the films title!
Nope, the films themes are hidden behind meanings and symbolisms; you don’t
feel like you’re being preached to. With films like God is not Dead and Heaven is
for Real, I feel like am being preached at from seeing the previews alone! So
anyways, there I was, doing my part in supporting a philosophical film with
interesting themes and intriguing cyberpunk elements which I am a sucker for,
unfortunately Transcendence wasn’t a very exciting film. Sure it was
philosophical, and sure it had interesting concepts which I was diggin’ for the
most part, unfortunately it all builds up to nothing. I wanted a bigger bang
for my sci-fi buck! Unfortunately the filmmakers weren’t all that interested in
showing us anything amazing or mind blowing.

The thing with this movie is that it had all the appropriate
elements to deliver something thought provoking and cool at the same time. The
concept of artificial intelligence becoming sentient, fully aware of its existence
is incredibly interesting to me. It presents us with the terrifying notion that
computers might one day think, like us, or for us. It goes even further and
plays with the ideas of transferring our consciousness into an artificial
intelligence, so that it might duplicate us in a way, so that we might, in a
way, live forever. Of course the logic behind it is a lot of bullshit science,
the kind of science that they show us in films where complicated scientific
procedures are explained away with a simple sentence. And that’s fine as far as
I’m concerned, I don’t need things to be explained to me, this side of the film
reminded me of the dream traveling technology in Inception (2010) which is
never explained in the film. It’s like the famous ‘McGuffin’ , you don’t really
need to know what it is, or how it works. What matters is how we go from point
A to point B. Unfortunately point B in Transcendence takes us nowhere. Interesting
concepts are presented but never taken to their full potential, I feel they
could have pushed things a bit further, they played it too safe in my book.

The film kind of contradicts itself because it presents us
with Will Caster, a scientist who has successfully transferred his consciousness
into the internet. He follows all the steps that a cult leader follows in order
to build his empire. He buys land, he builds a society apart from the rest of
humanity, and then he starts attracting parishioners by promising them
paradise. I couldn’t help but think about David Koresh and his shenanigans in
Waco, Texas, or Jim Jones and his Jonestown in Guyana. The problem is that the
character of Will Caster isn’t really evil; he creates technology that actually
helps humanity. His creations would make the world a better place, so then why
does the film make it a point to portray him as an evil religious leader? So which
is it, is he the leader of a zombie religion, or is he the savior of humanity?
It’s not just that this character has that duality to it; it’s just that the
character contradicts itself. The film is a jumbled mess in my book. It’s one
that wanted to play with heavy themes, but ultimately didn’t know how to
develop them in the best way possible. I mean, we're even presented with the idea of living in a world where technology has dissapeared from the face of the earth, which would have made an even more interesting film, but alas, they only hint at it.

Ultimately, the biggest sin this film has going for it is
that it was not entertaining. The ending is so incredibly dull I was literally
fighting to stay awake. I guess a lot can be explained by the fact that this
film was directed by cinematographer turned director Wally Pfister. The problem
with technical guys becoming directors is that they just don’t have that vision
necessary to tell a story in an entertaining or visually interesting fashion. Just
because you’ve worked behind the scenes all your life, doesn’t
mean you’d make a good director. Sure there are exceptions, but more
often than not, technicians and writers don’t always make good directors.
Examples of this are Blade Trinity (2004), Virus (1999), Spawn (1997), Eragon (2006),
all directed by writers and special effects guys who suddenly wanted to take a
stab at directing. I’m not saying that Transcendence is a terrible film because
it does offer us interesting concepts and at times interesting visuals, but
aside from being dull beyond measure, it even has great actors in roles that go nowhere! Cillian Murphy and Morgan Freeman are next to useless here. To me, Transcendence feels unfinished or
half assed; it didn’t push its concepts all the way. And those are some of the
worst cinematic sins in my book; a missed opportunity every step of the way.